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'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
121–130 of 177 posts
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
And I'm frequently amazed how tone deaf tech people are and how disconnected from the general population. ;)
OK got it. Its perfectly fine to automate away everyone else's job...except their own and their immediate family's. Then we're supposed to be anti-tech and this site becomes a political one. That is unless you bring up wars or fascism or genocide. Because politics is off limits.
this is a forum for a venture capital firm, everything here is political no matter how the average poster like to pretend it isn't and complaining won't override the financial incentives involved
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you... weren't... asking genuinely. You already came to a conclusion and just wanted to argue. Even if it's "secretly" #2 for most people, is that even unreasonable? It's so bizarre to me that people are acting like a supposedly existential threat on their livelihood is not a reasonable complaint or fear. Historically people, like, behead other people for that. I don't know, I'm older so I have much less fear abou…
You're putting a lot of words in my mouth. I shared my assumption. I asked the question to get a real perspective from someone who was already sharing. I didn't know their answer before I asked and still don't. Also I never said #2 was unreasonable. And I don't blame anyone for being fearful either. But there is an anti-tech sentiment on this tech site, and I find ironic and disappointing.
being anti-ai is not being anti-tech; people have posted language/editor/framework wars here for literal decades, nobody called not liking PHP being anti-tech
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#124I hope these companies aren't in for a shock when the younger generation rejects their brands https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/920401/g... If negative perception towards AI grows, either because of negative experiences after having it forced on them, or as people's utility bills skyrocket, or as the environmental impact becomes more apparent, they might find that what appeals to shareholders doesn'…
My kid was an excited Duolingo user who immediately cut it off entirely as soon as he heard that they were doing something with AI. That was all it took. He heard "Duolingo's AI now" on some YouTube video, and it was immediately dead to him. I don't think people understand just how viscerally negative the perception of AI is for the youth.
It's been a little over a year, but back when I was using the app, Duolingo advertised their own AI features within the app itself. I wonder if they still do, and if so, why it took watching a YouTube video for it to sink in...
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#125> PR executives say UK companies are forcing them to present ordinary automation as artificial intelligence What a time to be alive
To be fair, that’s not exactly a new thing, it’s just sensitive to the exact phase of the Great AI Freeze/Thaw Cycle. A lot of now-ordinary automation used to be "AI" until it become commonplace and no longer buzzword-worthy and thus no longer regarded as "AI", and/or an AI winter hit. Last time that AI was big before DL it was the "big data" fad and everything had to be big data. Marketing has never not been about h…
It doesn't make sense though. If a company builds automation and I need a company to build automation for me, that's good to market yourself that way.
If a company says "we build automation using AI", ehh, I'd probably cut out the middleman and use AI myself...
This is different from marketing around the cloud or big data.
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're being downvoted because you appear to be not asking genuinely and you're trying to cast doubt instead of seeking to understand. Because at this point there's really no excuse for not having any idea why people are mad about AI. If you can't guess it's because you're intentionally ignorant of the problem. Because "just asking" is a specific strategy used do doubt and discredit anyone you disagree with.
> You're being downvoted because you appear to be not asking genuinely I literally said I was asking genuinely. It's either one of two reasons imo: 1. Their son hates "ai slop" and doesn't think AI is useful. 2. Their son is afraid of not being employable. I see #1 the most here. But I suspect it's a front because the posters don't want to admit #2. Hence my question. I figured it's easier for someone to admit someon…
If that was your stance, the question was never genuine. When you ask a question expecting a certain outcome, you are obviously not very curious about the answer.
Also, HN is a somewhat large community. I am skeptical about AI for neither reason you mentioned - I think it's a deadend technology and the economics make no sense. A ridiculous waste of resources sucking up all the oxygen in the room.
I don't really care about slop, because that would require me to think that human generated shit is somehow superior. Truth is most things made by humans also suck.
I am also not at all afraid of losing my job to AI. I seriously doubt the competence and experience of anyone afraid of it.
I am afraid of losing my job because of the incoming brutal economic conditions worldwide that I believe are in the horizon. Partly because of AI, but not because I think agents can do my job; because the humongous amount of money burned in the AI pit has to be accounted for.
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#127> PR executives say UK companies are forcing them to present ordinary automation as artificial intelligence What a time to be alive
Remember when crypto was hot and everything had crypto. Remember the Internet was first hot and everything was iThis or Active That. iPhone still has i. Remember… well not, me, I wasn’t alive… when radiation was cool and Radioactive was in. Everyone always wants to be cool.
E-something was the big trend before i-something and we still have ebay and email (although only the former is a brand name).
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
And I'm frequently amazed how tone deaf tech people are and how disconnected from the general population. ;)
OK got it. Its perfectly fine to automate away everyone else's job...except their own and their immediate family's. Then we're supposed to be anti-tech and this site becomes a political one. That is unless you bring up wars or fascism or genocide. Because politics is off limits.
Different people come here for different things, I guess. I'd bet that most people like the actual "hacker" part: tinkering with fun projects, examples of great creativity, obscure mathematical puzzles, etc.
Greedy sociopaths from SV who don't care about impact on the society around them must be a small minority, I don't believe there is that many of them in the world, otherwise it would have collapsed already.
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#129I think a lot of people are secretly wishing for AI to be like the crypto grift but are in for a rude shock when it is definitely not going to end up like that. We will see more and more companies become AI driven and produce AI products. To think otherwise is naive.
Well, we saw more and more shitcoins and companies releasing NFTs too.
That's how the hype cycle works.
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup. Also ML is called AI now too at least as far as hiring managers are concerned. Adjust your resume accordingly.
AI used to be called ML which used to be called Statistics which used to be called “math” or maybe “applied science.” Obviously the underlying tech and research changed along the way… but not as much as it would seem. We’re still doing matrix operations and gradient descent and softmax, all of which has been around for a while.
This is not true because many older AI disciplines were not machine learning. A lot of work was put into tree search, logic programming, etc that we don’t count as ML. Older NLP work had little or no machine learning either.